Attorney General Roy Cooper: Your Boss’s Boss Seeks Your Help


Scammers, always on the lookout for more ways to steal, have come up with a new approach: pretending to be your boss’s boss. They’re counting on you being surprised and a little intimidated to get an email directly from someone higher up in the company.  They hope you won’t second-guess the order to wire a large amount of money to a client or vendor.

A company based outside Charlotte says that one of its employees recently got one of these emails. Fortunately the employee didn’t fall for it, but other companies haven’t been so lucky. The Internet Crime Complaint Center reports that the average loss from this scam is $55,000 but some companies have lost as much as $800,000.

Once money is wired away it’s usually gone for good. If you are an employer, set a strict company policy for wire transfers and make sure your employees know about this scam.

If you believe you’ve been approached by a scammer, report it to the Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division by calling 1-877-5-NO-SCAM or file a complaint at www.ncdoj.gov.